Tuff: A Novel

By Paul Beatty

From Paul Beatty, the author of the Man Booker Prize winner The Sellout, comes Tuff, a novel as fast-paced and hard-edged as the Harlem streets it portrays.

Age nineteen and weighing in at 320 pounds, Winston “Tuffy” Foshay is an East Harlem denizen who breaks jaws and shoots dogs and dreams of earning millions from his idea for Cap’n Crunch: The Movie, starring Danny DeVito. His best friend is a disabled Muslim who wants to rob banks, his guiding light is an ex-hippie Asian woman who worked for Malcolm X, and he married his wife, Yolanda, over the phone from jail.

He’s funny and fierce, frustrated and feared. And when Tuff decides to run for City Council, this dazzling novel goes from astoundingly funny to acerbically sublime. By turns profound and irreverent, and populated with a hilarious supporting cast, Paul Beatty's Tuff is satire at its razor-sharp best.

“An extravagant, satirical cri de couer...Beatty’s blunt, impious, streetwise eloquence has a kind of transfixing power.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Masterfully conceived and highly entertaining...Richly textured and unforgettable.”—The Boston Globe

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Jul 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9780374722906

Paul Beatty

Paul Beatty is the author of the novels, Tuff, Slumberland and The White Boy Shuffle, and the poetry collections Big Bank Take Little Bank and Joker, Joker, Deuce. He was the editor of Hokum: An Anthology of African-American Humor. In 2016, he became the first American to win the Man Booker Prize for his novel The Sellout. In 2017, he was the winner the American Academy of Arts and Letters Literature Award. He lives in New York City.

Book preview

1. TUFFY AND SMUSH

When Winston Foshay found himself on the hardwood floor of a Brooklyn drug den regaining consciousness, his reflex wasn’t to open his eyes but to shut them tighter.

Instead of blinking until he reached a state of alertness like a normal person, he stood up, and eyes still closed, hands splayed out in front of him, blindly searched for the full-length mirror he knew was somewhere between the leather couch and the halogen lamp. Feeling like a birthday boy playing pin the tail on the donkey, Winston found the mirror, gently touched the glass with his fingertips, and slowly opened his eyes, his suspicions of what the donkey looked like confirmed in full.

The jackass staring back at him has the drum-weary, heat-darkened face and heart of a Joseph Conrad river native. A thin beard of nappy curlicues worms from his chin. Deep worry lines crease his forehead. His eyelids droop at half-mast. His thick tight lips hint at neither snarl nor smile. Winston’s is a face that could just as easily ask you for the time as for your money. So impenetrable, so full of East Harlem inscrutable cool is his expression that usually even he doesn’t know what he’s thinking, but this time it’s different. This time his thoughts are as plain to him as the cracked likeness in the mirror. He probed the bullet hole that had smashed his nose into a shock-white dimple of crushed glass and thought, Niggers will be niggers.

Moments before he’d been as unconscious as a white heavyweight and, like the boxer, a debit to his race, so he didn’t quite trust the healthy appearance of his reflection. He frantically patted himself down as if he were looking for a cigarette lighter. Finding no bullet holes, Winston thumped a fist on his chest. Damn, a nigger still breathing like a motherfucker.

Scattered about the small Brooklyn apartment were three other ghetto phenotypes, soulless young outlaws posed stock-still, mouths agape, eyes open, like figurines in a wax museum’s rogues’ gallery. The room was Zen silent, save for the sound of the tattered curtains flapping against the wall and the steady gurgle of an aquarium filter. The cocksure composure Winston had lost only minutes before, during the shooting, was returning fast. Cupping his testicles with his left hand, Winston strode over to the nearest body, a man he’d known only as Chilly Most from Flatbush. Chilly Most was slumped over the coffee table, his forehead resting midway between the baking powder and the metric scales. Five minutes ago Chilly Most was fiddling with the dram weights, waiting for the base cocaine to arrive, pontificating on the idiocy of the incumbent mayor guesting on a radio talk show, taking credit for the city’s falling crime rates. "The mayor think rhyming sound bites, community policing, and the death penalty going to stop fools from getting paid. Don’t tell me, a criminal, eight credits shy of an associate’s degree in criminology, that stupid slogan ‘Stop the heist, love Christ,’ a cop on a moped, and the gas chamber will make you think twice. Please, once you decide to commit the crime you’ve already had two thoughts. Sneak attack or frontal assault? Should I say ‘Run your shit, nigger,’ or the more traditional ‘Stick ’em up’? You put the gun barrel up a nigger’s nostril, you think, Damn, I shouldn’t put skylight in this motherfucker’s dome, then you say, ‘Fuck it.’ That’s two more thoughts, right there. Man, the death penalty make you kill more. You spark one fool, you going to smell the vapors, might as well not leave no witnesses. Any fool with a modicum of reasoning ability would draw that conclusion. And if the city is so safe, why the mayor still traveling with nine bodyguards? All this empty election bullshit—if crime is down it’s only because niggers killing other niggers. Like when food gets scarce, alligators eat other alligators, trimming the population."

Chilly Most had indeed been trimmed. There was a golf-divot-sized cavity in the crown of his head and a thick layer of blood and junior-college brain tissue seeping over the charcoaled entry wound. Recoiling from the carnage, Winston sucked his teeth, popped a piece of gum in his mouth, and muttered, Goddamn, I hate Brooklyn.

To celebrate Winston’s eighth birthday, his father had taken him and his rowdy Brooklyn cousins on a day trip to Coney Island. Winston’s present was the entry fee to the annual hot-dog-eating contest. He won first place only to be disqualified for washing down thirty-three foot-long frankfurters with his father’s tepid beer. Instead of a year’s supply of all-beef wieners, he received a fifty-dollar citation for underage drinking.

The party moved to the sideshow tent, where Harry Hortensia, the Bearded Lady, let all the other children parade over her stomach as she lay on a bed of nails. When Hortensia spotted Winston out of the corner of her eye, trundling toward her like a baby hippopotamus, she shot up, rubbed his tummy for a cheap laugh, and gave the disgruntled boy his first kiss. While Salamander Sam, the Amphibian Boy, juggled flaming truncheons, Cousin Carl, imitating a talk-show host, ran up and down the bleachers, shoving an air microphone in the faces of strangers and asking, Since the bearded lady kissed my cousin Winston … does that make him a faggot? Then it was on to the Hellhole.

The Hellhole was an upright metal cylinder that by spinning at high speeds used centrifugal force to pin the riders like refrigerator magnets against its metal walls. The operator took Winston’s ticket and glanced at the roly-poly black boy and then at the rusty guide wires dangling overhead. How much you weigh, son?

Not that much, Winston answered, tears welling in his eyes. Please, mister, it’s my birthday. Against his better judgment the operator waved Winston through. Make sure you stand away from the door. The rest of you little shits stand opposite Buddha Boy to balance things out. Winston placed himself against the cold steel wall, trying to avoid the glare of his thrill-seeking cousins. See, Winston, your fat ass going to slow the ride down. There was a high-pitched whine and the Hellhole began to turn, gaining speed until the g-forces stuck even big Winston to the walls. All was forgiven, and his cousins shrieked and laughed, yelling for the operator to drop the floor! With a pained mechanical groan the floor began to recede, and for a moment Winston’s weight was not a hindrance: he was sticking to the wall like a swatted fly, just like the rest of the riders. Then, almost as soon as he allowed himself a smile, he began slowly sliding down the wall like a drop of paint. What, the ride was over? No, Cousin Julie was still horizontal, swimming her way around the cylinder. Look at Winston, she yelled, he falling like a motherfucking dead bird! The kids spun around and above, raining insults down on the helpless pudgy eight-year-old caught in the vortex of the metal eddy. Winston coughed up a ball of saliva and spat in the direction of his effeminate cousin Antoine, the loudest of his tormenters. The wad of mucus hung in the air for a tantalizing second, then snapped back, splattering on the bridge of his nose. Even his father laughed. Winston began to cry. The tears didn’t run down his chubby cheeks, but streamed backward, past his temples, canaling through the ridges of his ears. The sounds of ridicule from thirteen summers ago replaced the reverberations of gunplay in Winston’s ears. Fuck Brooklyn, and fuck all you Brooklyn niggers!

---

Now on this, the last cool night of summer, Brooklyn was short three more niggers for Winston to hate. Although he addressed all black men as God, Chilly Most, apparently less than divine, was unable to resurrect himself. Zoltan Yarborough, who was always running off at the mouth about his proud Brooklyn roots, Brownsville, never ran, never will, had become the rigid embodiment of his slogan. He had one leg over the windowsill, and a bullet hole in him that, like everything his mother ever told him, went in one ear and out the other. Demetrius Broadnax from Do-or-die Bed-Stuy was shirtless on the floor with a column of bullet holes from sternum to belly button in his muddy brown torso. Winston gloated over Demetrius’s body, looking into his ex-boss’s glassy eyes, tempted to say I quit and ask for his severance pay. Instead he walked to the aquarium, pressed his nose against the glass, and wondered who was going to feed the goldfish.

Like most of the jobs Winston had taken since graduating high school, this one also ended prematurely, after a job interview only two weeks ago where the look on his face was his résumé and two sentences from his best friend, Fariq Cole, were his references. This fat nigger ain’t no joke. Yo—known uptown for straight KO’ing niggers. There was no So, Mr. Foshay, how do your personal career goals mesh with our corporate mission? Would you consider yourself to be a self-starter? What was the last book you read? Demetrius simply handed Winston the inner-city union card, a small black .22 Raven automatic pistol, which Winston coolly, but immediately, handed back.

What, your ass don’t need a burner?

Naw.

Look, fool, maybe you can body-slam niggers out on the street, but in this business, people don’t walk in the door shaking their fists in your face.

Winston shrugged.

Demetrius studied him up and down and asked, You ain’t shook, are you? You don’t seem the scary type.

Never back down. Once a nigger back down, he stay down, know what I’m saying? Just don’t like guns.

Well, when some niggers do come in blasting, your big ass be in the way and shit, two, three motherfuckers can hide behind you. Be here tomorrow afternoon at four.

When Winston started work, he was in the way and shit, but not in the manner Demetrius had hoped. Winston’s job description was simple: four to ten, five days a week, answer the door, look mean and yell, Pay this motherfucker, now! at the balky customers. But the trip into Brooklyn made him edgy. His childhood traumas kicked in, undoing his cool. Instead of suavely sauntering around counting his money every five minutes, Winston fumbled about the drug den, stepping on people’s toes, toppling everything he touched, and talking nonstop. He tried to lighten the somber felonious atmosphere by telling embarrassingly bad jokes. (You hear the one about why Scots wear kilts?) After the flat punchlines (Because sheep can hear a zipper open from one hundred feet away) there would be a barely audible metallic click, the sound of Demetrius switching the gun’s safety to the off position.

Winston had trouble keeping track of the Brooklyn drug mores. Which colored caps went with what size plastic vials? Were portable televisions an acceptable form of payment? He was unable to distinguish one crew’s secret whistle from another’s. How often had Demetrius yelled at him, You moron, don’t flush the drugs! That’s the mating call of the ruby-crowned kinglet! Then Chilly Most and the others would join in with their snide castigations: As opposed to our secret signal—

The flight song of the skylark.

"A gentle woo-dukkadukka-woo."

"Good ol’ Alauda arvenis, indigenous to Eurasia, but common in the Northwest Territories of Canada, if I’m not mistaken."

You are not, you nigger ornithologist, you.

The last time Winston heard the cherished secret whistle, he answered the door and two niggers he’d never seen before, brandishing firearms, rushed past him and, before they could be properly announced, introduced themselves with a bullet in Chilly Most’s newly shorn bald head. Winston did what his coworkers always said he’d do if he ever found himself face-to-face with a gun: he fainted like a bitch.

Three minutes had passed since Winston regained consciousness, and he couldn’t leave the apartment. It was as if he were spacewalking, tethered to some mother ship treading Brooklyn ether. He would clamber for the door and a muffled sound in the hallway or a distant siren would drive him back into the living room. He began to mumble: This like that flick, the bugged-out Spanish one where the rich people couldn’t leave the house. Luis Bustelo or some shit. What is it … surrealism? Well, I got the surrealisms.

A creak in the floor behind him stopped Winston’s babbling. He quickly about-faced, balling his shaky hands into fists.

Who dat?

Who dat? came the response. Winston relaxed. He smiled, Nigger, unclenched his fists, and plopped down on the sofa.

Fariq Cole hobbled into the living room, his crutches splayed out to the side, propelling him forward. Fariq’s friends called him Smush because his nose, lips, and forehead shared the same Euclidean plane, giving him a profile that had all the contours of a cardboard box. Each herky-jerky step undulated Fariq’s body toward Winston like a Slinky, alternately coiling and uncoiling. A solid-gold dollar-sign pendant and a diamond-inlaid ankh whipped about his neck in an elliptical orbit like a jewel-encrusted satellite. Fariq stopped next to the doorjamb, tilted his head to the side, and cut his friend a dubious look.

Who was you talking to?

Nobody. Just trying to figure out why I was still here.

You still here because you couldn’t leave without me, your so-called boy.

You is. But it wasn’t you—I barely got to work ten minutes ago, I didn’t even know you was here. Naw, it’s something else.

Fariq was the coolest of the many cool handicapped East Harlemites. His appearance was inner-city dapper, functional and physically fit assimilationist. Despite the soft spot in his head where his skull had never fused, it’d been a long time since he’d worn a cyclist’s helmet. The bill of his fiberglass-reinforced Yankee baseball cap hung over his left eye, shadowing the surgical scars. The baggy corduroys covered up his leg braces. His clubfeet were squeezed into a pair of expensive sneakers, though he’d never run a step in his life. Fariq ran his tongue over his precious-metal-filled mouth, the front four incisors, top and bottom, capped in a gold-and-silver checkerboard pattern. Etched on his two front teeth were small black king and queen chess pieces, christened Fariq and Nadine in microscopic handwriting.

Now look at these no-money motherfuckers—who going to take care of their families? Fariq said, a rubber-tipped crutch sweeping across the carnage. That’s why a prudent motherfucker like me has an IRA account, some short-term T-bills, a grip invested in long-term corporate bonds and high-risk foreign stock. Shit, the twenty-first-century nigger gots to have a diversified portfolio—never know when you gon’ have a rainy day. And look like it was thunderin’ and lightnin’ in this motherfucker.

Winston and Fariq had known each other since the subway cost seventy-five cents. Fariq was an enterprising shyster who dragged Winston, the muscle, along on all his moneymaking schemes, the first of which was a fifth-grade dognapping operation so immense it required the use of every rooftop pigeon coop on 109th Street between Park and Second Avenues for kennel space.

The idea was to stalk the parks and streets of Manhattan luring unleashed dogs into the bushes with whistles, kindhearted Here, boys, and hickory-smoked slabs of beef sausage. The poor, whining creatures left tethered to parking meters while their owners kibitzed over cappuccino were liberated with garden shears. Then the boys waited for the rewards to be posted and returned to collect the bounty. Yeah, lady, the dog was wandering the streets of Harlem. Some crackheads had put an apple in his mouth and was fixing to skewer him with a barbecue spit up the ass, talking about ‘pooch du jour,’ when we rescued him and brought him here. Would fifty dollars be enough? Well, frankly, no.

Winston ran up to Fariq and with one flabby arm buried his friend’s head in a boys-will-be-boys headlock. Fariq’s eyes bulged with pain, Ow, Tuff! You know better than to do that shit.

Sorry, man—just trying show you some love, glad you alive and shit. Was it the spina bifida or the rickets flaring up? I can never remember which one you got.

Both, nigger, both. But I’m just sore from hiding in the tub. Heard that first shot, I belted my pants, fell into the tub, and pulled the shower curtain closed. Thank goodness those niggers didn’t have to piss.

We need to be out, son. Rollers going to show up any minute now.

The po-po ain’t here by now, they ain’t coming.

Well, them shoot-’em-up cowboys might be back to get me—don’t want to leave no witnesses behind.

Man, after they sparked up these clowns, I could hear them laughing at your big ass passed out on the floor. They ain’t worried about no swooning motherfucker coming back to get them. I thought I was going to come out and have to splash water on your face. Slap you around a bit, James Cagney style.

I didn’t faint. I was playing possum and shit.

Yeah, right. Let’s get ghost.

Who you, the leader now?

Fuck you, Tonto. Hi-yo, Silver, and away, nigger.

Robin.

Batgirl.

Al Cowlings.

Oh, a low blow.

They left the apartment with a bravado that belied their fear. The halls normally filled with kids and the sounds of blaring televisions were silent. The refugees were holed up in their urban-renewal hovels waiting for the occupying forces to leave. A little girl, wearing a belled choker, peeked out of a doorway, stuck out her tongue at the two boys, and was snatched by her ponytails back inside so quickly the bell didn’t even tinkle. The building’s elevators never worked, so Winston carried Fariq in his arms down twelve flights of stairs, gently setting him down next to a battered block of mailboxes. Readjusting the collar on Fariq’s shirt, Winston stepped back and snapped his fingers. Wait here. Now I know why I couldn’t leave—I forgot something. Be right back. Before Fariq could say, Naw, nigger, don’t leave me, Winston was springing up the flight of stairs two and three steps at time.

Fariq was nervous about being left alone, but pleased to see Winston’s famed agility return. Nigger was fumbling around the spot telling jokes like he Henny Youngman and shit. Talking to himself. I know the boy don’t like Brooklyn, but goddamn, fainting? Many times fools pulled guns on him? Tuffy be like, Shoot me, motherfucker! I guess the good thing about fainting in the face of death is that it keeps you from begging. That’s the old Tuffy, running them stairs like the big Kodiak bear of a brother he is. Fariq grinned, recalling how during the summer-long games of tag, only the fastest kids on East 109th Street could outrun Tuffy, avoiding his painful, heavy-handed tag back. Fariq’s toes began to tingle. He could feel the vibrations—the vibrations from the scraping of his corrective shoes as he dragged them over the craggy pavement, trying to run. Fariq was It for an entire summer: lumbering after screaming hordes of children on his crutches, feeling like the neighborhood leper, never catching anyone. On the first day of fifth grade Fariq had to resort to ringing Sharif Middleton’s doorbell at six-thirty in the morning, tagging the unsuspecting mope with a crutch in the gut as he answered the door wiping the sleep from his eyes. Tuffy, my nukka, where you at?

Winston entered the apartment, stepped over a body, and grabbed a brown lunch bag from the rear of the refrigerator. He reached inside the sack and gobbled down a cold, soggy ham-and-cheese sandwich. His mouth still full, Winston flipped the plastic sandwich bag inside-out, walked over to the aquarium, sprinkled the crumbs into the water, and when the fish rose to the surface, deftly scooped it out, barely wetting his hands.

Winston was knotting the plastic bag and on his way out when he heard a tinny ringing sound. The girl from the hallway was cowering in the corner of the living room, holding three puffy wallets, some jewelry, and Demetrius’s .22 Raven pistol in the folds of her dress. Winston bristled. You little vulture, these fools ain’t cold and you rifling pockets.

Finders keepers, losers weepers.

Christ, everybody and they mama got a hustle. Give me the gun.

The girl scrunched her face and backed even further into the corner, sticking her tongue out again. Winston walked up to the girl and took the gun from her hands, then lifted her to her feet by the elbow.

Go home.

She skipped down the hall to her apartment, the door opened, and a thin hand reeled her inside by the hem of her dress. The door slammed shut. Winston waited for the click of the lock, stuffed the gun into his pants pocket, gently placed the fish into the lunch bag, and hustled back down the stairs.

Where you been, man? Fariq said in a nervous whisper. Somebody’s out there.

I told you, I forgot something, Winston answered, holding up the bag.

You forgot your lunch? Here we are … niggers trying to kill—

"Shhh! Cállete, man." Winston peered around the corner. The security guard was sitting at his desk, scribbling phony names on the visitors’ sign-in sheet. The putrefied zombies of Al Capone, King Kong, and Mao could have entered the building, loading tommy guns, pining for Fay Wray, and talking about a Cultural Revolution, and this minimum-wage watchman was going to wave them through, no questions asked.

Ain’t nobody out there, just the rent-a-cop—let’s see if he know what the fuck up. Winston, still out of sight, called the guard’s attention. Hey yo, Barney Fife, couple of niggers come this way telling war stories?

Yup, came through a few minutes ago saying they now have to find and kill some crippled motherfucker. Asked me if I wanted to feel the guns. I did, and they was hot as a preacher’s brow Sunday morning.

Fariq’s body buckled at the pelvis, the crutches slipping out from under his arms. As he righted himself, his peptic ulcer rumbled like an active volcano and a small accumulation of warm, lumpy excrement flowed into his underpants. Shit.

Which way did they go? Winston asked the guard.

No way.

What?

They’re right out front, smoking Phillies and talking to some honeys.

Fariq’s yellowed eyes closed softly as every affliction kicked in at once. His arrhythmic heartbeat grew more erratic, pumping his sickle-celled blood in stops and starts. Bracing himself against the broken elevator, he cursed his mother for drinking, smoking, and shunning prenatal care during her pregnancy. Swallowing hard, he repeatedly pressed the Up button and castigated his father for thinking that his two-month-premature birth meant that he was born ready for Freddy. That boy don’t need no incubator. He’s not no chicken.

Winston chewed his bottom lip and watched his friend shake, then suddenly zipped past the guard and raced for the fire exit. He pushed on the latch, swinging open the heavy door into the dusk. A zephyr of spring air gusted in and, for a moment, cooled Winston’s sweaty face. The alarm sounded, its deafening ring filling the cinder-block hallways. Winston hurried back to Fariq and in one motion hoisted his friend onto a shoulder and ran toward the front door. Pausing in a cranny, he watched the gunmen head for the back of the apartment building. Carrying Fariq like a wounded war buddy, Winston tore out for Bushwick Avenue, hurdling bushes and slipping around the mottled Brooklyn trees like the tag player of yore. The clap of the gun pounding against his thigh, the jingle of loose pocket change, and the squeaks of the metal brackets holding Fariq’s body together at the joints sounded to Winston like the score to the climax of a Hitchcock thriller. He stole a glance behind him, half expecting to be buzzed by a crop duster.

At the intersection of Bushwick and Myrtle, a line of public buses were impatiently queued up behind a lone drunk ranting in the middle of the street. Like a column of Tiananmen Square tanks, the buses tried to maneuver past the man, but he halted each advance, stepping in front of the buses and boldly waving them off with a raggedy sports jacket. From his drug errands Winston knew the man usually confronted his pink elephants about this time of night, and he counted on him being there, challenging the powers that be with non sequiturs. I am black, it is raining. Warren Commission, I presume. Incoming! Winston and Fariq skirted past the man (You men, return to your positions), hopped on the third bus, and headed for the back. They sank low in the plastic seats, gasping for air and waiting for the bus to move. Fariq was wheezing. He frantically removed his inhaler from his jacket and took two long hits.

Shit, nigger, you didn’t have to do all that! You should have told me you was going to make your move, I could have followed you on my own.

Hah, Winston snorted.

Fariq moved to whack Winston with a crutch, but it was wedged underneath the seat in front of him. Naw, money, I’m serious. Shit is humiliating. I can take care of self, know what I’m saying, Tuffy?

"Spare me, bro. I’d had to rescue your ass like in Deer Hunter. Wasn’t for me you’d be in a bamboo hut playing Russian roulette with the Brooklyn Viet Cong. Didi, mau! Mau! Winston sniffed the air, then checked the bottoms of his sneakers. Hey, did you poot? he asked Fariq. Fariq said nothing, rolling his tongue in his cheek. For most young men this gesture was the sign for oral sex; for Fariq it was code for I had an accident." Winston reached under the seat and freed Fariq’s crutch.

The bus rolled onto Broadway, honking its way out of Bedford-Stuyvesant and into the fringes of the more cosmopolitan Williamsburg. As the projects receded into the distance the two survivors straightened in their seats, looking out the grimy windows. On the crowded sidewalks the people looked tired and angry, fighting for space on their way home from work. Bohemian whites weaved in and out of traffic, heads down, pissed off they couldn’t afford to live in Manhattan. Pairs of Hasidic men, dapper in black pin-striped coat-and-tail suits, walked like dandies, holding attaché cases and rehashing last night’s Knicks game. The only people Winston could differentiate as individuals were the Puerto Ricans. To Winston the whites, Jewish and Gentile, had the same general physiognomy. With callous, tight-lipped expressions, they marched as one, lockstep, arms linked at the elbows. The Puerto Ricans reminded him of people he knew. They were more or less from around the way, more or less niggers, more or less poor. The Puerto Ricans had faces he could say hello to. And he said a big silent What’s happening? to the woman in the green rayon sweater. Yes, you, honey dip, with the shopping bag. Why you walking so fast? Hurrying to help the kids with their homework? I feel you. The capital of Kansas is Topeka, that’s all I

Reviews for Tuff

[reenum_4 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

After reading White Boy Shuffle, I thought that Tuff would have to be better. It didn't appear to have any of the flaws that Beatty's debut had. The characters appeared to be more fleshed out, and the story more realistic. How wrong I was.

The main problem with this book was that it meandered too much. There is too much in here about the characters' ordinary lives and not enough action. This book never seemed to be have any sense of pacing or direction anywhere, and when the plot did advance, the whole thing seemed kind of forced. As a result, this book reads like a series of vignettes, rather than a unified novel. Also, Beatty's insistence of mixing low and high culture is irritating. One moment, the characters will be talking in ghetto slang, and the next minute, one of them is talking about his love of 1940's French movies. It just kills the mood that Beatty is trying to create.

Beatty obviously has great promise, but he has again failed to live up to it. I cannot recommend this book.